Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for his questions. The assault figures are fairly shocking. They were released under freedom of information and we set them out in our submission. Some 7,600 assaults on HSE staff were reported last year. That is only in the statutory hospitals and does not include psychiatric hospitals. It does not include the community or voluntary hospitals, meaning that it is much higher than that. Most worryingly, half of those assaults were against nurses. Obviously, the staffing levels contribute to an increase in the public's frustration, particularly when they are waiting. The level of assaults on staff in paediatric hospitals is higher which is of concern. There is also a higher incidence of psychiatric patients attending emergency departments and waiting to be assessed by psychiatry staff, sometimes for prolonged periods of time. A number of examples can be given of those inappropriate wait times.

Added into the mix is that the first port of call for the gardaí bringing patients with altered behaviours, drug abuse issues etc. is into the emergency department and the staff of the emergency department then have to deal with that. It is obviously an inappropriate area. We have previously requested that psychiatric admissions should be made first to the acute psychiatric units. As the Deputy has pointed out, there is another problem in that our psychiatric services are not fit for purpose.

We have a lack of services, particularly community services. That is a big problem and can lead to people with drug and alcohol abuse issues unfortunately ending up in the emergency department, which is unacceptable.

We hope this committee will look at the health and safety legislation which needs to be revised and strengthened to protect staff working in these departments. As I said in our opening statement, there are very clear guidelines for people working on building sites and if those guidelines are not met, the site closes. The reported figures are of over 7,000 people being assaulted. One of our members had an assault last year which ended her career; that is simply not acceptable. The hospital in question remained open. She was on duty for four hours after the assault because there was nobody to take over from her. Her colleagues went back into the very same situation with no change the next day.

The legislation relating to protection for nurses, doctors and healthcare workers in hospitals, particularly emergency departments, must be reviewed and strengthened. It is not acceptable to have inspection from a health and safety authority which does not recommend very serious improvements in the protection for staff working in these environments. If we have no alternative to people coming in, then the protection for workers must be strengthened and must be very clear and obvious to staff.

It is a feature of our health service that is extraordinarily unwelcome and should not be happening. One should not be assaulted as part of one's work or role. It simply should not happen. As I have said, the official numbers reported only tell half of the story because the assaults that were recorded did not include the voluntary or community hospitals.

I completely agree in respect of student nurses as the battles we had to get the McHugh report published involved protesting at the Dáil to request it be done. It is now published and we are still meeting with the HSE on aspects of it. Everything is a battle when it comes to improving the conditions for nurses, from the student right up the line. We have an expert review of nursing and midwifery in general which has just been issued to the Minister and, again, we are waiting for it to be published as this has not been done. There is a crisis in retention, in the workforce and in the conditions under which they are working. It should not be the case that nurses need to go on strike to highlight these issues. Most of the time they are highlighting the negative effects on patients of not investing properly in nursing and in midwifery. We fully agree with the point made by the Deputy.